Sydney Restaurant uses iPad as a Menu Card

We have already seen iPad installed in the cars, and how airlines are thinking about adopting it as an inflight entertainment system for its passengers in the skies. And now a restaurant owner in Australia has found another use of iPad – to replace printed menus in restaurants with iPad-based interactive menu cards !

Yes you read that right! If you happen to visit ‘Global Mundo Tapas’ in the North Sydney Rydges Hotel, you’ll be presented with an iPad which runs a special menu app made for the said restaurant instead of the normal printed menu cards that you’ll find elsewhere.

This idea might sound crazy but if you think about it for a minute, it is not only entertaining and interactive, but also environmental friendly as it saves trees from being killed to make paper.

Diners can peruse the dishes and see a picture of what the dish looks like along with tasting notes before compiling their order and sending it wirelessly to the kitchen.

The iPad menu can also suggest the best wines to go with certain dishes and suggest the best food pairings.

When ordering steak, users can even specify how they’d like the meat cooked and which sauce they’d prefer. It will even ask them if they’d like fries with that.

Mundo’s iPad menu app can also help keep track of stock levels so if certain dishes and wines sell out they will automatically disappear off the on-screen menu. It will even ask them if they’d like fries with that.

Craig Simpson, Rydges area general manager, who seems to be happy with the new idea, says the new iPad platform will enhance the dining experience.

We have something that presents really well, sells our food really well and is absolutely dynamic. The iPad menu would eventually make it possible to order food based on the weather or even match dishes to a person’s mood.

Interesting concept – I wonder how many iPad units they have on hand for patrons to order from.

jak

i guess theft crime was never an issue in australia

Jo

You're kidding about the iPad-menu being environmentally friendly, right? How much energy, carbon and non-renewable resources go into the production of a single iPad … let alone the energy required to power them.

Compared to the environmental impact of a few hundred sheets of paper each year, the iPad is a terribly wasteful use of resources.